William Lyon Phelps Quotes

There is nothing as dull as an intellectual ally after a certain age.

Smart people sometimes get stupid, but stupid people never get smart.

The tendency of old age to the body, say the physiologists, is to form bone. It is as rare as it is pleasant to meet with an old man whose opinions are not ossified.

Finished persons are very common - people who are closed up, quite satisfied that there is little more to learn

A majority of young people seem to develop mental arteriosclerosis forty years before they get the physical kind.

Most people are not prepared to have their minds changed, and I think they know in their hearts that other people are just the same, and one of the reasons people become angry when they argue is that they realize just that, as they trot out their excuses.

Narrow minds think nothing right that is above their own capacity.

Psychosclerosis: the hardening of the attitude which causes a person to cease dreaming, seeing, thinking, and leading.

As people get older they have these rigid patterns that they impose on themselves, and it kills them. They become dull, they become dead to new experience, they become afraid, biased, and bigoted. It's really simply to do with refusing new experience.

There is so much closed-mindedness, there is so much closed-off thought, there is so much bigotry and prejudice within knowledge that it, I think, is stunting the actual intelligence growth of our population. Not our capabilities but our actual intelligence growth because all of the stigma that's attached to people that don't have formal educations as opposed to those who do. But the people that have formal educations have been programmed and indoctrinated in many cases, not in all the disciplines.

Academic disciplines are subject to being overtaken by attacks of "knowingness"- a state of mind and soul that prevents shudders of awe and makes one immune to enthusiasm.

Some people are like that - closed - they can't learn from anyone. Us, for example, we can't learn anything, neither I from you nor you from me, nor from anyone, nor from anything, nor from what happens.

The fact is that people would rather cling when they're afraid of something to a priori beliefs than rather open their minds about it.

Smallness of mind is the cause of stubbornness, and we do not credit readily what is beyond our view.

We think very few people sensible, except those who are of our opinion.

Am I an intellectual? I don't think so. Less than people sometimes think, I have to say. But more than some others think.

I love the acquaintance of young people; because, in the first place, I do not like to think myself growing old. In the next place, young acquaintances must last longest, if they do last; and then, sir, young men have more virtue than old men; they have more generous sentiments in every respect.

The door of a bigoted mind opens outwards so that the only result of the pressure of facts upon it is to close it more snugly.

People say, "I can't take you seriously because you're so young." But I think when you're young, what you feel is more pure.

I don't think the entertainment business in general will ever just be okay with how people are. I think we're in a business that critiques everything we do, and you kind of just take it with a grain of salt. I look at my grandmother, and I think she's aged beautifully, so I hope that I could be a smidgen of how she's aged. There's nothing you can do. All you can do is take of yourself and do the things that make you feel good and make you healthy and age appropriately, but there's always going to be people out there are going to say something, and there's nothing you can do about it.

I think there's definitely much more opportunities for women now to find a role in 30s and 40s both. I think you're starting to find people really seeing that - here's the thing. It's hard for me to say and know the experience how it was ten, twenty years ago because I was only in my teens and my 20s, but I know from watching TV myself and watching film myself I see a lot more 30s and 40s on screen, which just makes me very, very happy. It's what we should be watching.

People have always said since TV was invented what a cultural wasteland it is but I think it is the worst and the best. It is the golden age of television.

Most often people seek in life occasions for persisting in their opinions rather than for educating themselves.

This alone is to be feared - the closed mind, the sleeping imagination, the death of the spirit. The death of the body is to that, I think, a little thing.

I do the best I can - I know my way around [Russian method acting pioneer] Stanislavski, but I can't take myself seriously like that. I respect people who do it, of course. I just think I'm lucky to still be working at 73. You reach a point in life where you just think, "Show up, do your job, make sure the cheque's on the way," and that's it. I'm not hungry to do anything more, really.